Politics this week

The Pheu Thai party won an election in Thailand. Led by Yingluck Shinawatra, the younger sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as prime minister in a military coup in 2006, the party won a majority in the lower house of parliament and added coalition partners to form a government. It is the fifth consecutive victory for a pro-Thaksin party and is a sharp rebuke to the governing elites. The army indicated that it would not challenge the result. See article

Australia resumed exports of live cattle to Indonesia, just a month after suspending them because some Australian cows were being slaughtered inhumanely. Export agents are supposed to assume responsibility for the cattle they sell.

A court in Bangladesh issued a warrant for the arrest of a son of Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister, charging him with having organised a grenade attack that killed 24 people at a political rally in 2004. Sheikh Hasina, the apparent target of that attack and nemesis of Mrs Zia, is now prime minister.

Vaults containing vast quantities of gold and jewellery from the 18th-century kingdom of Travancore were found under a Hindu temple in the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. One conservative estimate put the hoard's value at one trillion rupees ($22 billion). This is equal to half Kerala's GDP.

The 2018 winter Olympics were awarded to Pyeongchang in South Korea, which will be only the second Asian country to host the winter games.

Hugo home

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president, announced that his recent surgery in Cuba was for cancer. Mr Chávez returned to Caracas after three weeks abroad, but did not take part in person in the celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the country's independence. See article

Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) handily won three governor's races, including the contest in heavily populated Mexico state. The governor of that state, Enrique Peña Nieto, is the front-runner to win the PRI's presidential nomination next year.

The United States and Mexico signed an agreement that will allow lorry drivers to deliver cross-border shipments all the way to their final destinations, implementing a long-overdue requirement of the countries' 1994 free-trade deal. In 2009 Mexico imposed tariffs on $2.3 billion of American goods, after the United States stopped letting Mexican lorries past the border area.

Brazil's transport minister resigned amid allegations that employees in his department had skimmed money from infrastructure projects. He is the second member of Dilma Rousseff's cabinet to quit within a month over corruption claims.

An unwanted sight

Two bombs in Taji, a town north of Baghdad, killed at least 35 people. Violence in Iraq is on the rise six months before the scheduled departure of American troops.

Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the former dictator of Tunisia now resident in Saudi Arabia, was again convicted in absentia, this time of illegally possessing drugs and weapons. Last month a court sentenced Mr Ben Ali and his wife to 35 years on theft charges. He fled Tunisia in January.

The German parliament questioned the recent sale of 200 tanks to Saudi Arabia because of the country's human-rights record, including its participation in the crackdown on protesters in Bahrain in March.

Around 98.5% of Moroccan voters approved a new constitution in a referendum proposed by King Mohammed VI, who faced pro-democracy protests earlier this year. See article

South Sudan prepared to celebrate its secession from Sudan following decades of political infighting and civil war. It officially gains independence on July 9th. See article

The lessons of Saint Paul

Minnesota's state government was shut down, affecting non-urgent services, after the Democratic governor and Republicans in the legislature failed to agree on a plan to plug a $5 billion budget deficit. As well as cutting spending Democrats want to raise taxes on Minnesota's wealthiest residents. See article

With the Treasury's deadline to avoid a default of August 2nd looming into view, the pace picked up in negotiations in Washington over raising the federal debt ceiling. Barack Obama held private talks with John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, and asked Democratic and Republican leaders to attend discussions at the White House. See article

The Transport Security Administration warned that recent intelligence indicated that terrorists linked to al-Qaeda were looking at ways to conceal bombs on aircraft by surgically implanting them into an operative's body. The agency said there was no imminent threat, but introduced extra security at airports.

Red-faces at a red-top

In Britain the scandal surrounding phone-hacking by the News of the World, a Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International, forced an emergency debate in the House of Commons, after allegations surfaced that the phones of young murder victims and people killed in 2005's terror attack in London had been hacked. Allegations also emerged that police officers had been paid by the newspaper for providing information on stories. David Cameron, the prime minister, promised a public inquiry but not until the police end their investigation. See article

The DSK scandal continued to enthrall France. After prosecutors in New York admitted that the alleged victim had lost credibility in an attempted-rape case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, some speculated that he might return to the French presidential race. But another attempted-rape case against Mr Strauss-Kahn was pursued by a complainant in France, which may dim his prospects. See article

A court in the Netherlands ruled that the Dutch state was responsible for three deaths in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Dutch peacekeepers were meant to be protecting Bosnian Muslims at the time.

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, was forced to withdraw a clause he had slipped into an emergency budget. The clause would have helped his Fininvest holding company to delay for some years compensation it had been ordered by a court to pay to Carlo De Benedetti, a business rival. See article